NaNoWriMo Success – 50,000 words!

Posted by Jennifer Jensen Dec 1, 2008

It's official. The November craziness of National Novel Writing Month is over. My gray progress bar turned gradually to blue as I accumulated words, and 50,444 words later, it flashed green, and later purple with a big "WINNER!" inside it. Hurray!

It was an exhausting month. I finished by the 22nd, as planned, but I had hoped to keep writing in snippets even while we had visitors. I was surprised at how quickly I dropped it all when I uploaded my official count! I wasn't entranced with the story anymore, and had no time to think about additions and revisions, so my brain was quite ready to shut off.

It was difficult to turn off my internal editor, but the more I wrote, the easier it got to just write the story without worrying about how it sounds. That, and the discipline to write every day, are the best things I’ve learned from NaNoWriMo.

The characters did drive the story like I had hoped. A side character appeared and grew into a main antagonist. A brother’s frustration turned into major psychological problems. And as inner ramblings revealed characters, I found I could have the theme (which developed during the first two weeks) echoed through my MC, her mother, and her friend (who didn’t even exist until the end of week two!).

I got caught up in our All-Ireland-Word-War (Munster came in third), so I have some padding and off-the-wall tangents which will be tossed out later. Chattering inside my character's head is good for wordcount and character development, but it sure doesn't move the story forward.

I'm heartily glad it's over, and quite proud of the accomplishment. I’ll work on something else while this cools off, and then begin a major re-write later. And yes, I'll probably do NaNoWriMo 2009, but with an outlined plot this time. I guess I like a challenge!

I’d love comments from any other NaNoWriMo participants – how you did, what you learned, etc.